(no subject)
I'm not really sure what's up with this. There's more of me in this than I'd care to admit. And it's probably awful. /disclaimer
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But it is a matter of shared history, or, as it were, we lived the same lie - Carolyn Forché
They visit 12 Grimmauld Place through the floo only. When Bellatrix is young, she places her hand on the front door's knob. It crackles with magic and she yanks her hand back, sucking the pain from her fingers. The front door is always locked and the heavy curtains on that side of the house drawn. Bellatrix imagines the door opening onto nothingness, a black void, and she is thrilled with fear. She goes out to the back garden, wild with roses and monkshood, a Devil's Snare lurking in the shade beneath a rhododendron.
Bellatrix is there on New Year's Eve, when Sirius bumps his mother and her wine splashes across her pale robes, and she loses her temper and smacks her son across the face. Bellatrix watches in horror: her mother and father never strike her. Though they never say so, she knows it's forbidden. In front of the whole family, Sirius looks down at his feet, red-faced with shame or fury, and then goes to bed early, even before Regulus, the baby.
Bellatrix and her sisters stumble up the stairs after midnight and fall asleep together in a wide bed. In the morning, Bellatrix is the first to awaken, and in the dull light there is a bloom of crimson on the back of her sister's nightdress. Bellatrix's piercing screams wake the rest of the house, and her uncle comes rushing in, wand drawn, and, seeing what has happened, leaves just as quickly.
At breakfast Andromeda doesn't look at anyone, but she kicks Bellatrix under the dining room table and hisses, "Stupid, now everyone knows!"
Bellatrix's mother only tells her, "Don't be frightened. It will happen to you, too."
----
The first time Bellatrix can remember hearing--and understanding--the word Mudblood she is six, and her aunt and her mother are doing lacework in the sitting room. Her mother says, "Sh, the girls!" and her aunt replies that the children shouldn't be coddled.
"They should know."
"They do know," Bellatrix's mother says. "They are born knowing, and they will die knowing. This is how it is for us all."
What Bellatrix knows is the emptiness she imagines outside the front door of her aunt and uncle's home, because it is less frightening than what may truly be out there. The word Muggle is a word the adults whisper in her house, the word Muggle becomes for her the word God: not a people but an unblinking eye that watches the doorstep of 12 Grimmauld Place, of the Leaky Cauldron, of every entrance to her small, safe world. A cat poised with its paw raised outside a mouse's hole.
And it is embodied by everything one must not do or say. Like a smack across the face or the donning of trousers, or that mysterious bleeding about which no one can speak.
----
When Bellatrix rides the Hogwarts Express for the first time, she learns why Andromeda never speaks about school, and why Narcissa never speaks about Andromeda. That evening, Sirius is sorted into Gryffindor, and she recalls her mother's words like a threat, like a prophecy: It will happen to you, too.
She reads divination books in the library, even before third year, and lets the older girls read her palm or the cards or the dregs of her tea--anything that will tell her when. There is no need for what, no need to question the why of the inevitable. All that matters is that it will happen.
It happens to Andromeda, then Sirius, like they have been put under Imperius, like someone else has taken Polyjuice Potion and transformed into them, and they are swallowed into the nothingness of the other world. It is not death, but something worse, like the Dementor's Kiss.
Bellatrix places her hand on the doorknob at 12 Grimmauld Place, the magic burning her flesh until she can bear it no longer. If she does nothing, she will be swallowed up, too. The only things that can save her are the things that hurt: the skin sizzling as Voldemort's wand is touched to her forearm with the hiss of Morsmordre. The Cruciatus cast on others. A last, desperate shout torn from her throat.
The cards, the tea, the crystal ball, they always say the same things: no matter what, the end is death. It is not her own death she fears, it is the death of her world.
-----
But it is a matter of shared history, or, as it were, we lived the same lie - Carolyn Forché
They visit 12 Grimmauld Place through the floo only. When Bellatrix is young, she places her hand on the front door's knob. It crackles with magic and she yanks her hand back, sucking the pain from her fingers. The front door is always locked and the heavy curtains on that side of the house drawn. Bellatrix imagines the door opening onto nothingness, a black void, and she is thrilled with fear. She goes out to the back garden, wild with roses and monkshood, a Devil's Snare lurking in the shade beneath a rhododendron.
Bellatrix is there on New Year's Eve, when Sirius bumps his mother and her wine splashes across her pale robes, and she loses her temper and smacks her son across the face. Bellatrix watches in horror: her mother and father never strike her. Though they never say so, she knows it's forbidden. In front of the whole family, Sirius looks down at his feet, red-faced with shame or fury, and then goes to bed early, even before Regulus, the baby.
Bellatrix and her sisters stumble up the stairs after midnight and fall asleep together in a wide bed. In the morning, Bellatrix is the first to awaken, and in the dull light there is a bloom of crimson on the back of her sister's nightdress. Bellatrix's piercing screams wake the rest of the house, and her uncle comes rushing in, wand drawn, and, seeing what has happened, leaves just as quickly.
At breakfast Andromeda doesn't look at anyone, but she kicks Bellatrix under the dining room table and hisses, "Stupid, now everyone knows!"
Bellatrix's mother only tells her, "Don't be frightened. It will happen to you, too."
----
The first time Bellatrix can remember hearing--and understanding--the word Mudblood she is six, and her aunt and her mother are doing lacework in the sitting room. Her mother says, "Sh, the girls!" and her aunt replies that the children shouldn't be coddled.
"They should know."
"They do know," Bellatrix's mother says. "They are born knowing, and they will die knowing. This is how it is for us all."
What Bellatrix knows is the emptiness she imagines outside the front door of her aunt and uncle's home, because it is less frightening than what may truly be out there. The word Muggle is a word the adults whisper in her house, the word Muggle becomes for her the word God: not a people but an unblinking eye that watches the doorstep of 12 Grimmauld Place, of the Leaky Cauldron, of every entrance to her small, safe world. A cat poised with its paw raised outside a mouse's hole.
And it is embodied by everything one must not do or say. Like a smack across the face or the donning of trousers, or that mysterious bleeding about which no one can speak.
----
When Bellatrix rides the Hogwarts Express for the first time, she learns why Andromeda never speaks about school, and why Narcissa never speaks about Andromeda. That evening, Sirius is sorted into Gryffindor, and she recalls her mother's words like a threat, like a prophecy: It will happen to you, too.
She reads divination books in the library, even before third year, and lets the older girls read her palm or the cards or the dregs of her tea--anything that will tell her when. There is no need for what, no need to question the why of the inevitable. All that matters is that it will happen.
It happens to Andromeda, then Sirius, like they have been put under Imperius, like someone else has taken Polyjuice Potion and transformed into them, and they are swallowed into the nothingness of the other world. It is not death, but something worse, like the Dementor's Kiss.
Bellatrix places her hand on the doorknob at 12 Grimmauld Place, the magic burning her flesh until she can bear it no longer. If she does nothing, she will be swallowed up, too. The only things that can save her are the things that hurt: the skin sizzling as Voldemort's wand is touched to her forearm with the hiss of Morsmordre. The Cruciatus cast on others. A last, desperate shout torn from her throat.
The cards, the tea, the crystal ball, they always say the same things: no matter what, the end is death. It is not her own death she fears, it is the death of her world.